In a semiconductor device manufacturing process of forming a laminated structure for an integrated circuit on a surface of a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter, referred to as a wafer) serving as a substrate, a substrate processing apparatus is used for performing various processes such as a deposition process an etching process, and a coating and developing process of a resist film in a photolithography process on a wafer.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-129769 (see, for example, claim 1, paragraphs [0042] to [0050], and FIG. 1) describes a substrate processing apparatus (a substrate processing system) in which a plurality of processing units (wafer processing units) are provided for supplying various processing liquids to a wafer to perform a liquid processing or a drying processing, and a wafer in a substrate receiving unit such as a front-opening unified pod (FOUP) is transported to each of the processing units using a transport mechanism (a second substrate transport device) or a conveying mechanism (a first substrate transport device).
In the substrate processing apparatus, a shelf-stage type intermediate conveying unit (a substrate accommodating unit) is provided for temporarily disposing a wafer being transferred between the FOUP and the processing units, transferring a wafer between the transport mechanism and the conveying mechanism, and accommodating a plurality of wafers. A wafer is exclusively transferred between the FOUP and the intermediate conveying unit by the conveying mechanism, and a wafer is transferred between the intermediate conveying unit and the processing units by the transport mechanism. The conveying mechanism sequentially transfers wafers to unoccupied units of the intermediate conveying unit to increase the transfer efficiency.